School Absences

January 14, 1989|By Donald R. Kanner.

CHICAGO — The words in your recent headline ``Teacher no-shows rising`` bear no resemblance to the truth in the numbers that you have published.

The message given to parents is that the rate of teacher absences is alarming. However, your published figures show 6,540 students without a teacher on an average day. In a system with about 500,000 students, the fact is that on a given day only 1.3 percent of the classrooms are without teachers.

Where I teach, Lane Tech, the student absence rate runs about 9 percent on an average day. In other schools student absence rates of 20 percent, 30 percent, 40 percent and up are not uncommon. Each absent student results in a loss of state aid money, but what does The Tribune do to encourage parents to send their students to school with greater regularity?

Your scare tactics result in parental apathy and lack of faith in what our system can do when we have the students there to do it. The result is a high rate of absence on the part of students, condoned by misinformed parents.